Jesus, Josephus, and... the Testimonium Slavianum?

Recently, our compatriot Victor Reppert reposted a link to Chris
“Layman” Price’s fine essay on the major testimony from Josephus about
Jesus (which can be found archived here.)
Readers may be surprised to learn that there are a few other references
to this testimony in ancient documents, which we can analyze for
comparison with text-critical principles, to help derive an idea of the
original text. But what happens when we turn those same principles on a
very late source for the Testimonium, which has been (almost?)
universally rejected as material for comparison--including by Chris? I
think the results, while far from conclusive, are at least interesting!

But first, some background for comparison.

(Note:
this entry deals with facts and theories very well-known among students
of the early history of Christianity, especially on questions of the
historical Jesus, and so could be skipped by people familiar with the
case so far. Alternately, you could read Chris’ more extensive article,
linked above.)

Josephus and the Testimonium Flavianum

As
most students of historical-Jesus studies (pro or con) are well aware, a
passage exists in the work of the Jewish historian Josephus known as
the Antiquities, where Josephus in the midst of relating numerous
stories indicting the competency and honor of both the Sanhedrin under
the faction of Annas and also the Palestinian governor Pontius Pilate,
takes a moment to discuss how they handled a man named Jesus.

The passage is found in all extant copies of this particular book of the Antiquities
(18.3.3 lines 63-64), which is admittedly not all that many--like other
ancient texts the textual record is poor compared with the New
Testament canon documents, but excluding that set as abnormal Ant.
is much better than average in the number of copies (and their
place/date provenance ranging) which we have available for text-crit
purposes.

As it stands, this paragraph, which has
received the nickname of the “Testimonium Flavianum” (after Josephus’
patronage name of Flavius, the Imperial family for whom he was writing
this history of the Jews from ‘antiquity’ up to his present times), runs
as follows in English, more or less:

Around
this time lived Jesus, a wise man, if indeed it is right to call him a
man. For he was a worker of amazing deeds and was a teacher of people
who accept the truth with pleasure. He won over both many Jews and many
Greeks. He was the Messiah. Pilate, when he heard him accused by the
leading men among us, condemned him to the cross. [but] Those who had
first loved him did not cease [doing so]. For on the third day he
appeared to them alive again, because the divine prophets had prophesied
these and a thousand other things about him. To this day the tribe of
‘Christians’ named after him has not disappeared.

Even though we lack direct external testimony (so far as I know) showing a copy of the Ant.
to have any other form than this paragraph, the vast majority of
scholars on all sides of the ideological aisle regard the passage as
having been slightly but seriously tampered with at some point in its
transmission.

One short phrase, “if indeed it is right
to call him a man”, and the blunt declarative statement, “He was the
Messiah,” seem to be completely out of character for Josephus. He would
be risking his life telling his Imperial patrons that a Jewish wise man
was the anointed king of the world; or else they would have no idea what
the phrase was even supposed to mean. (No qualification is present for
explanation. The relevant meaning is assumed to be known by the reader.)
More importantly, Josephus in uncontrovertible passages elsewhere shows
that he not only has a low opinion of Messianic candidates, whom he
blames for the troubles of the land, but also that he considers
Vespasian (the military warlord and eventual Emperor who had defeated
the Jewish rebellion) to be the fulfillment of Messianic prophecy! It is
utterly unlikely that Josephus would be totally reversing this in a
throwaway paragraph intended otherwise to be another piece of evidence
against the administrations of the Sanhedrin and Pontius Pilate.

A
longer and more complex sentence is typically regarded as interpolation
as well: the one that begins “For on the third day” and ends at “other
things about him.” Personally I’m on the fence about it, for the
language could be read as expressing the opinion of the people who had
loved Jesus from the first and continued to believe in him after his
execution (unlike other Messianic candidates of the time, as Josephus
relates elsewhere.) This sentence would also serve the immediate
apologetic purposes of Josephus, for without it the critique against the
“leading men among us” and Pilate would be merely implied at best.
Moreover, Josephus does want his patrons to respect the divine prophets
of the Jews, and goes to a lot of effort to help them be acceptable
elsewhere in the Ant.

The main problem against
this sentence, is that if Josephus is prepared (for his apologetic
purposes) to accuse the Sanhedrin and Pilate of wrongly executing a man
foretold by divine prophets of YHWH, thus by implication a
super-important agent of YHWH himself, it is peculiar that he doesn’t
spend more time on him in other regards! Against this complaint it might
be objected that Josephus was aware that Christians in his day were
making divine-authority claims of Christ over against Caesar (including
with parallel terminology). To me this seems more likely to be a reason
for Josephus to paint Jesus in more acceptable lights (to Roman Imperial
eyes) in the passage we do know about--which would mitigate
against the inclusion of this sentence as well as the two short
ultra-probable interpolations. Most importantly, though, if Josephus
wants to impress his Imperial readers with the foretelling of this man’s
appearance by the divine prophets whom he elsewhere wants his Imperial
readers to respect, then it is odd that elsewhere in the paragraph the
language can be easily interpreted to be more neutral: “amazing deeds”
is literally “paradoxical deeds”, and the word for “pleasure” is
“hedonism” which had no more positive connotations for them at the time
than it would for us today. (On the contrary, it’s a bit negative!)

Consequently,
then, while I can see some good arguments for retaining the sentence, I
typically omit it, too, following the lead of the vast majority of
analysts.

There are very few analysts among scholars
who try to argue for massive interpolation or outright forgery of the
whole passage--a position most popular among Jesus Myth proponents who,
understandably, don’t want it there, or at least don’t want it to be
referring to the Jesus of the Gospel stories. There are perhaps a few
more analysts among scholars who try to argue for the originality of the
whole passage--and at least it can be said that they do have positive
textual data on their side! (There is a 10th century Arabian-Christian
report of the TF, which looks rather like a reconstruction removing
interpolations, but which includes the Messianic statement with the
qualification “maybe”. However, it is not a copy of the Ant. itself, but a notice from Agapius’ Universal History. More on this in a moment.)

But I accept the general reasoning involved, that in a previous stage before our current copies of the Ant., the TF read as follows (with a more neutral interpretation of meaning):

Around
this time lived Jesus, a wise man. [For?] he was a worker of
paradoxical deeds and was a teacher of people who lustily accept truth.
He won over both many Jews and many Greeks. Pilate, when he heard him
accused by the leading men among us, condemned him to the cross. [but]
Those who had first loved him did not cease [doing so]. To this day the
tribe of ‘Christians’ named after him has not disappeared.

I certainly would have no problem including the sentence about why those who had loved Jesus from the first did not cease doing so. But I don’t need it in there, either.

Yet on the other hand, the report of the TF from Agapius’ Universal History
(in a 10th century Arabic copy), keeps a lot of the received full
version of the TF, in a tamped-down form (I owe this information to
Robert E. Van Voorst’s Jesus Outside the New Testament, 2000, pp.97-98):

At
this time there was a wise man who was called Jesus. And his conduct
was good and was known to be virtuous. And many people from among the
Jews and the other nations became his disciples. Pilate condemned him to
be crucified and to die. And those who had become his disciples did not
abandon his discipleship. They reported that he had appeared to them
three days after his crucifixion and that he was alive. Accordingly, he
was perhaps the Messiah concerning whom the prophets have recounted
wonders.

This form is interesting in that
the sentence about paradoxical deeds and people who lustily accept the
truth (which could have slightly negative connotations) is completely
absent; and a sentence with a positive but not flagrant approbation is
included instead: his conduct was good and [he] was known to be
virtuous. The “men among us” are not mentioned at all, as being
implicated in Jesus’ death or otherwise--not present in Agapius’ version
(which he states he’s getting from Josephus)? Or simply elided past as
unimportant (by either Agapius or his 10th century copyist)?

The
short phrase “and to die” is mentioned as an addition to Pilate’s
condemnation. The reason for why his disciples kept following him is
given, but in arguably a tamped-down form compared to the known extant
TF texts: the appearances are presented specifically as a report
of the disciples. Most importantly, the three most problematic
statements in the received TF are either missing (“if indeed it is
proper to call him a man”), or found at the very end in a more careful
form (“perhaps he was the Messiah” “concerning whom the prophets have
recounted wonders.”) This replaces the final sentence of the received
TF, which might have been considered pointless by someone in the chain
of copying to the 10th century source.

It’s difficult
in some of these cases to guess whether the differences occur due to a
different form being used by Agapius (or his own copyist!), or whether
he is making small clarifications and eliding other topics as being
unimportant. (It is even more difficult, though interesting, to ponder
to what extent apologetics against Muslim incursion could be expected to
result in inclinations to alter the TF in the 10th century Arabic copy,
and how-or-why-or-how-far!) Also, it is hard to gauge whether the whole
replacement of the sentence concerning paradoxical deeds etc. indicates
that this sentence, in the received version, is itself an
interpolation, or whether Agapius (or someone before him) thought it
sounded too potentially negative and so replaced it with the solid but
restrained affirmation of Jesus’ basic decency.

However, I am impressed by both the existence of part of the explanation for continued discipleship, along with the porting
of the other part of that explanation to be put, at the tail end, with a
more circumspect affirmation of Jesus’ Messiahship. Two of the three
widely modern guesses about interpolation are found at the very end (in
place of a sentence that would be of little importance to Agapius’
audience), and the third guessed interpolation is completely absent. Yet
it isn’t the whole of the longest guessed interpolation which is absent--only the portion that would make the most implausibility coming from Jospehus.

I
consider this to be serious (though not decisive) evidence that some
phrase about appearances (whether as in the received TF or in Agapius’
version) was found in a prior form of the TF. Fitting such a phrase into
the wide-majority consensus reconstruction, would produce something
like:

Around this time lived Jesus, a wise
man. [For?] He was a worker of paradoxical deeds and was a teacher of
people who lustily accept truth. He won over both many Jews and many
Greeks. [Perhaps including here, ‘...who believed him to be the
messiah’.] Pilate, when he heard him accused by the leading men among
us, condemned him to the cross. [but] Those who had first loved him did
not cease [doing so]. [For?] They reported that he had appeared to them
three days after his crucifixion and that he was alive. To this day the
tribe of ‘Christians’ named after him has not disappeared.

However: this might not in fact be the original form of the Testimonium Flavianum
either! For there is another highly interesting but little-known
version of this paragraph, found not in a commentary borrowing from
Josephus’ book on Jewish history, nor in any copy of the Antiquities itself, but in one copy of the other most famous book from Josephus, The Jewish War.

I’ll discuss this in Part 2 (now available here), as well as explain why the title of my article refers to the Testimonium Slavianum.

Footnote: R O'Brien has left a comment on at Victor's post "What did Josephus Really Say about Jesus?", posting some remarks from Alice Whealey's 2008 article on the TestiFlav in Syriac and Arabic (Whealey, A. 2008. "The Testimonium Flavianum in Syriac and Arabic". New Testament Studies. 573–590)

She argues that the version preserved by Michael the Syrian is closest to the original:

"In
fact, much of the past impetus for labeling the textus receptus
Testimonium a forgery has been based on earlier scholars’ anachronistic
assumptions that, as a Jew, Josephus could not have written anything
favorable about Jesus. Contemporary scholars of primitive Christianity
are less inclined than past scholars to assume that most first-century
Jews necessarily held hostile opinions of Jesus, and they are more aware
that the line between Christians and non-Christian Jews in Josephus’
day was not as firm as it would later become. The implication of this is
that supposedly Christian-sounding elements in either the textus
receptus or in Michael’s Testimonium cannot be ruled inauthentic a
priori."

...

"This study thus also
implies that it is Michael’s Testimonium that is much more important as a
witness to Josephus’ original text about Jesus than Agapius’
Testimonium. By far the most important aspect of Michael’s Testimonium
in terms of recovering Josephus’ original passage is its reading ‘he was
thought to be the Messiah’, because this reading is independently
supported by Jerome’s very early translation of the Testimonium, and
because it can readily explain Origen’s claim that Josephus did not
believe in Jesus as the Messiah. Therefore the most important aspect of
Agapius’ text is its reading that Jesus was ‘perhaps’ the Messiah,
because this reading lends weight to the hypothesis that Michael’s
qualification of Jesus’ Messianic status was based on an older exemplar
of the Testimonium rather than being created by Michael ex nihilo."

...

"In
arguing that Agapius’ Testimonium was closer to Josephus’ original
passage about Jesus than any extant Testimonium, Pines followed a long
line of earlier scholars who assumed that Josephus’ original passage
about Jesus must have been very different from the textus receptus
Testimonium, which these same scholars assumed to have been
substantially rewritten by a Christian forger.43 In contrast, in arguing
that Michael’s Testimonium, which is generally close to the textus
receptus Testimonium and which has clearly been taken from a recension
of the Syriac Historia Ecclesiastica, is more authentic than Agapius’
Testimonium, this study implies that the textus receptus Testimonium is
much closer to the passage that Josephus originally wrote about Jesus
than is often assumed. Indeed, the evidence of Michael the Syrian’s
Testimonium, used in conjunction with the evidence of Jerome’s
Testimonium, indicates that the only major alteration that has been made
to Josephus’ original passage about Jesus is the alteration of the
phrase ‘he was thought to be the Messiah’ to the textus receptus phrase
‘he was the Messiah’."

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